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This tutorial will explain how to Atheros AR5007EG or AR242x wireless cards working in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).First you need to compile latest ath5k driver using the following procedure.Use one of the following method.

Preparing your system

sudo aptitude install build-essential

This will install all the required compilers.

Method 1

Now you need to download the latest wireless drivers from here using the following command

Now you have compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2 file you need to extract this file using the following command from the terminal

sudo tar -jxvf compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2

Move to the directory you extracted in terminal

cd directoryname

Run the following commands

make

sudo make install

sudo make unload

sudo make load

Uninstall drivers

If you want to uninstall cd in to the wireless drivers directory path and use the following commands

sudo make unload

sudo make uninstall

Method 2

if you are on Intrepid and still cannot use wifi with an Atheros card , you need to do two things, 1) install linux-backport-modules and 2) blacklist ath_pci and ath_hal.

To install the backport modules, just search for it on Synaptic or use apt-get or aptitude, it's called linux-backports-modules-intrepid. Then on System/Administration/Hardware Drivers make sure Atheros driver is activated.

sudo aptitude install linux-backports-modules-intrepid

For Jaunty Users run the following comamnd

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

To blacklist the old modules, do this:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

And add the following lines At the bottom of the file save and exit

blacklist ath_hal
blacklist ath_pci

Now you need to reboot your system.

IF after this steps you still cannot make it work, you probably have something left still blacklisting ath5k, thus making it not to load. You should search all the files on /etc/modprobe.d for all lines that had:

blacklist ath5k

And add a # before the start of the line, thus making it into a comment so the above one becomes

95 thoughts on “How to get Atheros AR5007EG or AR242x wireless cards (may be other models) working in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)”

There is an additional option, since ath5k is under development and as many of the people (including me) that have tried it also have noticed that the connection is lost after some time, and on the other hand, the card can stop working if you have a dual boot and after a restart, you try to boot under vista, (that happened to me and I solved it completely shutting down the machine and starting it again). Well.. lets go with METHOD 3 (using madwifi)
Download the latest snapshot from:http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/
this branch adds support for AR5007 cards.
Extract the content in a folder.
uninstall linux-backports-modules-intrepid as it interferes with madwifi.
sudo dpkg -P linux-backports-modules-intrepid

then go to the folder where you extracted the snapshot and in a terminal go to the scripts folder and run these two SCRIPTS:
cd scripts
./madwifi-unload
./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r)
cd ..

answer r(remove) to remove old madwifi modules.
then just these two more lines:
make
make install

then check (if you have followed methods 1 or 2 before) that madwifi isn’t blacklisted:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and comment the lines if present:

blacklist ath_hal
blacklist ath_pci

so they look like:
#blacklist ath_hal
#blacklist ath_pci

and thats it! reboot and you will have your AR5007 working!

I have tried both ath5k and madwifi, but i have to say that for this card madwifi is better, more stable and doesn’t cause weird things as I commented before.

You, My friend are a GOD SEND!!! This got my wireless Atheros AR242x up and running after countless failed attempts via other methods. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to making this possiable, painless, and very simple to do. You and the rest of the free & open-source community rock!

Henrik:
When you run the second script (./find…) you are going to be asked for removing the old madwifi modules, when you answer “r”, the script will remove them. then cd .. go back to the folder where you extracted the snapshot. then you should be able to compile and install.
sudo make

then

sudo make install

and thats it. I recommend you familiarize with the command line and use google if you dont understand any command.

Sorry for all the fuss, i just found out that my card is a ar928x and that madwifi does not surport it, but i found a promising looking tread in the Ubuntu-forum;http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=874097
for my type of card, sorry i wasted your time, and thaks for the quick reply

3rd Method did not work for me. It got me further than any other method, however. At least now my HP DV5 is using a driver, realizes there is a wifi card here, but does not connect to the network. Anyone have any tips?

Thank you very much after doing all three methods, the card is finally working and registering no stupid time out and die stuff. It only took 12 hours of straight work to make this happen thank you to all that has helped. I can now drop dead and work on this stuff some more tomoro

In Jaunty it pretty much worked right out of the box but was SLOWWWWWWW. I had compiled the madwifi-hal under centos5.3 (ath5k would not work in cent) on this laptop and it gave me a consistent 19Mb/s DL however with ath5k on Ubuntu on this laptop I could only get < 5Mb/s or worse. Oddly I never got madwifi to work in Jaunty.

I just read your guide and ran the command:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

and added "blacklist ath_hal" right under "balcklist ath_pci" in "/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf" and rebooted.

thanks for this i’ve been mucking about with madwifi for months trying to get the ar242x in my presario c700 working, tried a different google search, found your instructions and had it working in under 15minutes. method 1 worked fine, thanks.